Hello @mention. I've used pyTest only for basic tests, but not CI/CD. So I will share my experience with Robot Framework.
Benefits:
- If non dev want to develop test, it can be easy for them to write their own tests (but if you have well specified atomic keywords).
- Generate test reports.
- Big community & lib ressources (pytest has the same benefits)
- Easy to integrate with classic CI/CD frameworks (Jenkins, Github actions …)
Drawbacks:
- If you or your team are devs with Python knowledge, i'll suggest you to develop your with python. Even if you choose Robot FW, you will certainly have to write a python layer.
- Code overhead : In my opinion, it takes too much time to develop a Robot FW layer, specially if you have not clearly specified all your keywords at the beginning,
- Some basic development features are ugly (look how to do a simple FOR loop…)

For microservice testing, Robot FW or pyTest can both do the job.
If you plan to develop only a rest API testing layer, manu python lib can also do the job : Flask, FastAPI, …

Hey @mention , thanks for your response. I'm a new employee, but the team is already sort of using Cypress for end-to-end. My boss is nagging me to limit my use of Cypress for integration testing. I don't know if Cypress is the best option because I'm very new to this microservice architecture. especially if you want a separate repository just for automation. I can communicate with the services using their APIs, but these services do not necessarily interact with each other via APIs; some of them consume messages from queues, in this case, SQS. My main goal is to test the communication happening between services. I just need a better understanding or maybe good articles that will help me understand how I can do this. I need a tool that supports robust libraries to enable me to mock these calls. I have automated integration testing for my previous organization. It was simple because I wrote the code within the same repo, so I could totally control that the server connects to my mock DB and it establishes a connection with the amqp URL I am providing. I just don't understand how I can do it here when I am totally dependent on APIs to communicate with the services. Sorry if I sound stupid, but I just need some insights on how I can achieve this. Any doc, any open source example, or anything I can use to get started will be very helpful.

@mention As far i can understand your problem, you've to create a map of the communications between your services, right ? I think you need something like probes on the backend services to create a map and monitor requests, performance, … Have you tried tools like AppDynamics, Dynatrace, New Relic, or something else ?

https://www.appdynamics.com/blog/product/automation-framework-in-analytics-part-1/

With an APM you'll be able to identify the requests used by the clients and create mock servers easily

I'm using https://jestjs.io/ for create my tests

i haven't actually created anything. I need to write automation for integration testing to test the communication happening between different services in a microservices architecture. We have done end-to-end testing, but now we want to write tests to verify the communication paths and interactions between services to detect interface defects. @mention

I can suggest you some tools to achieve this specific job like https://pact.io

You can have a look on their youtube channel which give a great overview of the problematic and the solution they bring to us with Pact : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwy9Bnco-IpfZ72VQ7hce8GicVZs7nm0i

Thank you @mention , I'll read this and let you know if I have any questions or comments.

With pleasure 👍

Thanks @mention pact is exactly what i needed… gonna start working on the poc branch 😄 😄

Cool ! It may be a heavy load at the first place since you've to declare all the services to establish all the contracts, but then it's very usefull and worth

How can I get a specific value inside 2 nested dictionary?

@mention Hello, that's not the purpose of this thread i suggest you to post it directly on the channel <#902834445168570390> and to bring us more context (language, use case, …)

i have a doubt @mention so let's say the consumer code is written in typescript and the provider's in goLang.. will pact support multiple languages while writing the contract..

Pact will definitely support it 🙂

You have multiple implementation of pact for most languages

Have a look here : https://docs.pact.io/implementation_guides/cli, you can use pact as a CLI, library for JS, Java, .NET, Go, Python, C++, Rust etc…

You can even use it on your CI with Docker

You talked about Cypress the other day, you can have a look at their new adapter too : https://www.npmjs.com/package/@pactflow/pact-cypress-adapter

cool thanks 🙂

Hey @mention so i have written the dummy test for pact in the consumer side and trying to run the test with mocha…the spec file is in typescript.. and i have added the config for mocha in .mocharc.json
{
"extensions": ["ts"],
"spec": ["src/pact/.spec."],
"node-option": [
"loader=ts-node"
]
}
but still getting the Unknown file extension ".ts".. any idea how i can solve this?

Hello @mention , did you try to have a look at the Mocha example repo for Typescript ? https://github.com/mochajs/mocha-examples/tree/master/packages/typescript ?

Yea i did… but was still getting the same error..

In the outDir folder have you all the expect transpiled (JS) files, spec files and typescript map files ?

The only way i could reproduce your error is when i disabled the line "require": "ts-node/register" from the example and set yours :

"node-option": [
  "loader=ts-node"
]

i actually changed it back to "require": "ts-node/register" from what i had earlier.. it is still throwing the same error… 😞

So your .mocharc.json file is like :

{
  "extension": ["ts"],
  "spec": "src/pact/*.spec.ts",
  "require": "ts-node/register"
}

?

yep

Did you try to clone their demo package and start the test command from here ?

It may be a problem from your tsconfig.json

With their repo you may isolate the problem by comparison from your repo

yea you are right… it is because of the tsconfig.json, and after altering the tsconfig file's content to match what they had, it is no longer throwing the same problem.

this is a problem.. :/

Did you figured out what's the tsconfig property in fault ?

naah .. still figuring out…

it is cz of the module.. i have just created another tsconfig extending the original one and while running mocha, have specified the overridden configuration to use.. it is working now..

By module you mean your package is ESM ?

yep..

had to change it to commonjs

Yeap Mocha as some features available for ESM : https://mochajs.org/#nodejs-native-esm-support, but not all…

Thanks for your help 🙂 i might bug you a lot while i am working on this…

Hey @mention, I've been asked to compare pactflow and the open-source pact-broker. I completed the Pactflow setup but could not find detailed documentation for using a self-hosted pact-broker. Could you please help me?

Hello @mention, the pact-broker documentation can be found here : https://docs.pact.io/pact_broker, you've multiple way to deploy a Pact Broker app. I suggest you to find the best way , with minimum impact / costs between CLI, Bin, Docker Image.